Aloo Methi Curry

I'm counting the seconds until the start of the long weekend here - Monday is a holiday.
Two things have put a damper to the general excitement in the air. My Cannes trip got postponed and the weather forecast did a u-turn upsetting countryside picnic arrangements.
Oh well, at least there's always Indian food.
I settled on a wonderful and simple recipe using fenugreek leaves. Fenugreek is used as fresh/frozen leaves, dried leaves (kasoori methi) and as whole seeds in Indian cooking.
The leaves are bitter, but they are often used with potatoes or carrots to balance out the taste. My simple aloo methi curry recipe is steeped in creamy yoghurt, which cuts through the bitterness of the leaves for an altogether more balanced taste.

Method:

Take the yoghurt out of the fridge and bring it to room temperature. Grind the onion, whole spices, ginger, chillies and coriander to a smooth paste in a hand blender or food processor. If you don’t have one, just finely chop the onion, chillies and ginger.

Heat the oil and fry the above ingredients for 10 minutes until the green mixture turns a deeper shade and doesn’t smell raw. You may need to keep adding water to prevent the mixture for sticking to the pan.

Chuck in the potatoes, and fry on a high heat until translucent. Add in the yoghurt, a cup of water and cook covered on a medium heat until you can insert a fork into a piece of potato with some difficulty.

Next stir in the methi / fenugreek leaves and cook covered on a medium flame until the potatoes are cooked. This takes a good 20 minutes, so keep stirring gently to prevent the curry from sticking to the bottom of the pan. You could always add parboiled potatoes, but they don’t taste as steeped in the spices.

Finally stir in the butter, simmer for five minutes and enjoy Aloo Methi Curry.

Your dishes always looks so good and seem to be relatively easy. For those people like me that are Indian-cooking challenged (lol), I always feel like I can attempt your recipes and they may actually turn out!

I’ve been looking for recipes to creatively use my fresh fenugreek leaves. This and methi parathas scored the highest hits and I am taking the aloo methi route. The recipes I’ve seen are dry aloo methi subjis whereas the yogurt in yours adds a liquid factor; great for rice and roti both! Thanks for sharing!

Oye! I’m sure the world is made of variations, but for an “original alu methi” fan like me, yours is way off! Alu methi is awesome dry with small jackets-on potatoes. My version has just cumin seeds, red chilli powder, turmeric powder alu and methi in it. Brings out the flavours wonderfully (which onions etc mask IMHO). Oh the heaven is when this is served with a dollop of homemade fresh cream and hot rotis of course! 🙂

Oh yes! You are absolutely right about aloo methi! Which is precisely why this dish is called “aloo methi curry”. Do try it sometime, it will be a great variation to what you know. As you quite rightly said, the world is made of variations. It couldn’t be truer of Indian food.

HELP please – how do you prepare fresh spinach, dill leaves and fenugreek (methi?)as a salad/boiled vegetable dish? An Indian woman in the local supermarket told me to boil all the ingrediants for a veggie dish but I am still unsure as to the exact recipe method.